What is Google URL shortener and where is it useful? If you’re fond of using Twitter, you may have encountered this shortened URL thing already. It simply compresses a long URL into fewer characters to make it easier to share with others. A short URL enables you to share more news, ideas, comments, opinions, or interesting posts that’s why more and more people like to use them.

As of this time, Google URL shortener can’t be used to shorten links directly. It is only available from the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner which makes it easier and quicker for you to share, post, and email links. Google’s scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime, stable, and reliable service to millions of Google users. Shortened URLs are also instantly checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such unpleasant sites.

If things go smoothly as planned and if this service proves useful to a lot of users, Google will enable this functionality to broader consumer use in the near future.